Consultants told the city commission Tuesday that Lawrence needs more of all types of housing units on the market in the next decade in order to increase housing affordability.
The consultants, from Development Strategies, have been working on an affordable housing study for the city since October. They plan to release a finalized iteration with around 50 strategies for improving housing affordability on Friday, June 26.
“We’ve had staff really get to the point about how we don’t have a robust affordable housing incentive policy, and many of our community stakeholders hammer that to us, and we’re finally getting to it,” Commissioner Amber Sellers said. “So I do appreciate that, and how do we overlay that with the final report?”
Justin Carney, principal with the firm, presented an “appetizer” of findings to the commission and community Tuesday.
Don’t miss a beat … Click here to sign up for our email newsletters
Click here to learn more about our newsletters first
He said studies have shown safe and affordable housing has a direct impact on a person or family’s access to jobs, financial security, and success in education and health.
Please support
The Lawrence Times!
Subscribe here.
However, since 2020, Development Strategies found that home value increases outpaced wage increases by double in Lawrence.
They projected that the city would need 6,315 additional units — 2,920 for sale and 3,395 for rental — over the next 10 years. However, permitting has also declined since 2020 and, if the trend continues, Lawrence won’t meet that demand.
Carney also highlighted that folks making 80% or less of the area median income needed 3,400 of those units.
“The for-sale private housing market is not going to deliver units that are affordable to this group of households,” Carney said.
The AMI is a value set each year by the federal government. For fiscal year 2026, the AMI for a household of one in Lawrence is $77,312, and for a household of four, $110,400. For a household of one, 80% of the AMI would equate to an annual income of $61,850. For a household of four, 80% of the AMI would equate to $88,300.
Carney told commissioners and attendees that the final study will highlight five major goals for the city, including getting more units on the market, making housing more physically accessible, and improving maintenance and preservation of units.
“Just as important as production of new housing for Lawrence is to maintain affordability in the long term,” he said.
Carney also said it was critical to do public education about what affordable housing truly is, while leveraging the programs that already exist within the city.
Sellers and Vice Mayor Mike Courtney asked Carney about preservation, a term he had used in his presentation. Carney said it is “not historic preservation, it’s homeowner preservation.”
That could include home maintenance, weatherization, improvements for energy efficiency or rehabilitation of systems like air conditioning and plumbing.
He brought up “naturally occurring affordable housing,” or NOAH, which might be older and smaller units.
“Not quite the same kind of marketability that modern units have, but they’re cheaper, they’re often smaller and they need repair,” Carney said. “So in some instances there are ways to help support and preserve and maintain those older homes, and tools to preserve their affordability.”
Public commenter Hilary Carter said preservation also means protecting housing before it becomes unaffordable. Restrictions that keep units affordable expire over time, she said. Owners can then charge market rates and long-term residents can be priced out of their once-affordable homes.
“Preservation is the work of getting ahead of that,” Carter said. “It means identifying those properties where restrictions are about to expire, acquiring those properties, typically rehabilitating them, and extending their affordability for another generation of residents. It is one of the most cost-effective strategies we have in affordable housing.”
Danielle Davey, government affairs director for the Lawrence Board of Realtors, said during public comment that the study will confirm information realtors have been telling the city for a decade.
“We have significant populations in Lawrence who want to buy a home, but our market is severely lacking in housing inventory and falling further behind neighboring communities,” Davey said.
Davey said the city could make permitting less of a hassle to increase housing stock. She commended commissioners for funding infrastructure expansion in the capital improvement plan for West Lawrence development and working to revise the land development code.
Public commenter Dominique Sexton said that affordability initiatives should go beyond incentives for developers and directly support people who need housing. Sexton said that, while Kansas statute bans rent control, the city could support the local tenants union.
Sellers said they can look at cooperative housing and other approaches that haven’t been squashed by state legislation.
“We do need to look at those different types of models, because that helps spur individuals to be committed to their community when they know that their community has policies that see them, as the tenant, and not always in support of a landlord, or a property owner,” Sellers said.
The city put out a request for proposals for the study in February 2025. Development Strategies responded with a proposal costing $99,850. The study is funded by the federal Community Development Block Grant CARES Act dollars that have been allocated for the project, according to RFP documentation.
After the finalized affordable housing study is released to the city and the community on June 26, commissioners will consider adopting the strategies Tuesday, July 21.
If local news matters to you, please help us keep doing this work.
Don’t miss a beat — get the latest news from the Times delivered to your inbox:
Click here to learn more about our newsletters first
Wulfe Wulfemeyer (they/them), reporter and news editor, has worked with The Lawrence Times since May 2025. They can be reached at [email protected].
Read their complete bio here. Read their work for the Times here.
Latest Lawrence news:
August Rudisell/Lawrence Times
